Writing Course from Fall 2004
PLACING PICTURES, with Virginia Boyd
Using Photographs to Explore the Landscape of Your Past
- Thursdays, September 9 - October 14, 6:30 - 8:00 pm (six-week course, 9 hours of instruction)
- Meets at the Network Library and Resource Center in Chapel Hill
- $110 Network members / $130 non-members
In this creative writing workshop we'll use photographs as a means to travel through time. We will explore the importance of "place" in our memories and in the stories we tell about our lives, and we will use photographs from our own collections to take us there. Usually we pay closest attention to what is caught in the foreground of a photograph, but this time our focus will shift to the background and to the role it plays in setting the context of our memories and our lives.
During the six-week workshop, class participants will be asked to write about the places that they most long to return to and those that they were happy to escape. Regardless of which destinations you choose -- the home of your childhood, the land your family owned and worked for generations, the vacation spot you've visited so many times, or the places you know only through family lore and legend -- this is your opportunity to explore the notion that where you've been has significant impact on who you are today. Class members will be asked to share their writing and to give each other constructive feedback on their work.
Virginia Boyd worked as a writer for the Duke University News Service
for many years before earning a master's degree in creative writing from
NC State University. She has taught English -- literature, composition,
and creative writing -- at the high school level and currently leads
creative nonfiction workshops for the Duke Institute for Learning in
Retirement, a division of Duke Continuing Education. She is at work on a
novel titled Gone to Graceland that was excerpted in the "Sunday Reader"
section of Raleigh's News & Observer.